The Tornado Cash DAO website has gone offline, according to multiple reports on social media. The Tornado Cash community has discussed ways to challenge the latest sanctions on the coin mixing software.
The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control announced the sanctions on Monday. Multiple authorities and entities have taken action to cut ties with the recently sanctioned platform.
In the last four days, Circle froze more than 75,000 USD Coin (USDC) worth of funds at addresses listed by Treasury officials. Additionally, dYdX said it had blocked select users’ accounts with funds linked to Tornado Cash. Alchemy and Infura.io also blocked remote procedure call requests to the crypto mixer.
Tornado Cash software developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested by Dutch authorities on Friday as well. His wife confirms the arrest in an interview with The Block.
Multiple other resources to Tornado Cash have been banned or shut down. Co-founder Roman Semenov said on Monday that his GitHub account was suspended from use. The Tornado Cash Discord Server went offline Friday as well, following Pertsev’s arrest.
It is “the first time the U.S. government has criminalized interacting with software,” according to Omid Malekan, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business school. It is unknown if or when the Tornado Cash DAO website will return.